Trying To Make Sense of Dinosaurs…

I will admit before reading “The New Answer Book” by Ken Ham I was really dead set against believing dinosaurs exsisted…I had all these thoughts like…How could they fit on the ark? How on earth would these big mean creatures live with humans? They can’t be millions of years old b/c man and animal were created on the same day, the sixth day? How could anyone know what dinosaurs look like from finding the bones…that would be like us never knowing what a cat was and finding these bones one day and drawing it just from seeing its bones to be like a cat with fuzzy ears, wet nose, fluffy fur you couldn’t possibly fathom what it looks like without ever seeing it, so it is just a guessing game. So I was dead set against it and I knew that behemoth was in the Bible but I thought yeah hippo or mammoth or elephant! But thanks to reading this book by Ken Ham he answers every one of my questions above so that’s why I posted the whole section he wrote on “What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs.” No joke EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY QUESTIONS ABOVE WAS ANSWERED!!!

I am no longer so skeptical about the possibilities of there being dinosaurs b/c I was picturing these Jurassic Park movie type things and I couldn’t believe that those would exist so Ken Ham did an excellent job in making sense of Dinosaurs so that is why I chose to name the following 15 posts “Making Sense of Dinosaurs” b/c that’s exactly what Ken Ham did! I am not responsible for the content in the “Making Sense of Dinosaurs: PART I-XV” I simply copied and pasted from the web @ http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/what-happened-to-the-dinosaurs
and from there I found the Bible verses he referred to and wrote them in to make it easier for you to read without stopping.

I really hope you find the answers you may be seeking as to Dinosaurs and this helped me so please read if you are interested it may help you!

Making Sense of Dinosaurs: PART I & Index

INDEX
PART I: Index & Are Dinosaurs A Mystery?
PART II: Why Such Different Views?
PART III: Two Ways of Thinking
PART IV: Dinosaur history; Where Did Dinosaurs Come From?;
What Did Dinosaurs Look Like?; Who Discovered
Dinosaurs?
PART V: When Did Dinosaurs Live?
PART VI: Does The Bible Mention Dinosaurs?
PART VII: Are There Other Ancient Records of Dinosaurs?
PART VIII: What Do The Bones Say?
PART IX: What Did Dinosaurs Eat & How Did They Behave?
PART X: Why Do We Find Dinosaur Fossils?
PART XI: How Did Dinosaurs Fit on the Ark?
PART XII: Why Don’t We See Dinosaurs Today?
PART XIII: Are Dinosaurs Really Extinct?
PART XIV: Birdosaurs?
PART XV: Why Does It Matter?; Millions Of Years And The Gospel;
Conclusion

The following is taken from “The New Answers Book” by Ken Ham pg 149-176
Copied from http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/what-happened-to-the-dinosaurs (pictures taken from here but found through google)
Bible verses taken from “The Evidence Bible”
I wrote non of these views or excerpts. I only looked up the Bible verses and added them in for you for easy reference

NOTE: Anything with * * refer to end of post for footnotes

Dinosaurs are used more than almost anything else to indoctrinate children and adults in the idea of millions of years of earth history. However, the Bible gives us a framework for explaining dinosaurs in terms of thousands of years of history, including the mystery of when they lived and what happened to them. Two key texts are Genesis 1:24–25(“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creeps upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”) And Job 40:15–24 (“behold now behemoth, which I made with you; he eats grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the naval of his belly. He moves his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong as pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach to him. Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play. He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens. The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about. Behold, he drinks up a river, and hastens not: he trusts that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth. He takes it with his eyes: his nose pierces through snares.”

Are Dinosaurs a Mystery?
Many think that the existence of dinosaurs and their demise is shrouded in such mystery that we may never know the truth about where they came from, when they lived, and what happened to them. However, dinosaurs are only a mystery if you accept the evolutionary story of their history.

According to evolutionists: Dinosaurs first evolved around 235 million years ago, long before man evolved.*1* No human being ever lived with dinosaurs. Their history is recorded in the fossil layers on earth, which were deposited over millions of years. They were so successful as a group of animals that they eventually ruled the earth. However, around 65 million years ago, something happened to change all of this—the dinosaurs disappeared. Most evolutionists believe some sort of cataclysmic event, such as an asteroid impact, killed them. But many evolutionists claim that some dinosaurs evolved into birds, and thus they are not extinct but are flying around us even today.*2*

There is no mystery surrounding dinosaurs if you accept the Bible’s totally different account of dinosaur history.

According to the Bible: Dinosaurs first existed around 6,000 years ago.*3* God made the dinosaurs, along with the other land animals, on Day 6 of the Creation Week (Genesis 1:20–25, 31 says “And God said, Let the water bring forth abundantly the moving Creature that has life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creeps upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day”) Adam and Eve were also made on Day 6—so dinosaurs lived at the same time as people, not separated by eons of time.

Dinosaurs could not have died out before people appeared because dinosaurs had not previously existed; and death, bloodshed, disease, and suffering are a resultof Adam’s sin (Genesis 1:29–30 says “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creeps upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.”); Romans 5:12, 14 says (“12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.”); 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 says “For since by man came death, by man came also the ressurection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”)

Representatives of all the kinds of air-breathing land animals, including the dinosaur kinds, went aboard Noah’s Ark. All those left outside the Ark died in the cataclysmic circumstances of the Flood, and many of their remains became fossils.

After the Flood, around 4,300 years ago, the remnant of the land animals, including dinosaurs, came off the Ark and lived in the present world, along with people. Because of sin, the judgments of the Curse and the Flood have greatly changed earth. Post-Flood climatic change, lack of food, disease, and man’s activities caused many types of animals to become extinct. The dinosaurs, like many other creatures, died out. Why the big mystery about dinosaurs?

FOOTNOTES

1.J. Horner and D. Lessem, The Complete T. Rex, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1993, 18; M. Norell, E. Gaffney and L. Dingus, Discovering Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History, Nevraumont Publ., New York, 1995, 17, says that the oldest dinosaur fossil is dated at 228 million years. Back
2.D. Gish, Evolution: the Fossils Still Say No! Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, California, 1995, 129ff, discusses evolutionists’ views from a creationist position; Norell et al., Discovering Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History, 2: “Dinosaurs belong to a group called Archosauria … . The living Archosauria are the twenty-one extant crocodiles and alligators, along with the more than ten thousand species of living theropod dinosaurs (birds).” Back
3.J. Morris, The Young Earth, Master Books, Green Forest, Arkansas, 1994; H. Morris, The Genesis Record, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976, 42–46. On the biblical chronology, see J. Ussher, The Annals of the World, Master Books, Green Forest, Arkansas, 2003; original published in 1658. Back

Making Sense of Dinosaurs: PART II

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Why Such Different Views?
How can there be such totally different explanations for dinosaurs? Whether one is an evolutionist or accepts the Bible’s account of history, the evidence for dinosaurs is the same. All scientists have the same facts—they have the same world, the same fossils, the same living creatures, the same universe.

If the “facts” are the same, then how can the explanations be so different? The reason is that scientists have only the present—dinosaur fossils exist only in the present—but scientists are trying to connect the fossils in the present to the past. They ask, “What happened in history to bring dinosaurs into existence, wipe them out, and leave many of them fossilized?”*4*

The science that addresses such issues is known as historical or origins science, and it differs from the operational science that gives us computers, inexpensive food, space exploration, electricity, and the like. Origins science deals with the past, which is not accessible to direct experimentation, whereas operational science deals with how the world works in the here and now, which, of course, is open to repeatable experiments. Because of difficulties in reconstructing the past, those who study fossils (paleontologists) have diverse views on dinosaurs.*5* As has been said, “Paleontology (the study of fossils) is much like politics: passions run high, and it’s easy to draw very different conclusions from the same set of facts.”*6*

A paleontologist who believes the record in the Bible, which claims to be the Word of God,*7* will come to different conclusions than an atheist who rejects the Bible. Willful denial of God’s Word (2 Peter 3:3–7 says “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word kept in store, reserved to fire against the day of judgement and perdition of ungodly men.”) lies at the root of many disputes over historical science.

FOOTNOTES

4 M. Benton, Dinosaurs: An A–Z Guide, Derrydale Books, New York, 1988, 10–11.
5 Benton, Dinosaurs: An A–Z Guide. See also D. Lambert and the Diagram Group, The Dinosaur Data Book, Avon Books, New York, 1990, 10–35; Norell, et al., Discovering Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History, 62–69; V. Sharpton and P. Ward, Eds., Global Catastrophes in Earth History, The Geological Society of America, Special Paper 247, 1990.
6 M. Lemonick, Parenthood, dino-style, Time, p. 48, January 8, 1996.
7 Psalm 78:5; 2 Timothy 3:14–17; and 2 Peter 1:19–21. God, who inspired the writing, has always existed, is perfect and never lies (Titus 1:2).

Making Sense of Dinosaurs: PART III

Many people think the Bible is just a book about religion or salvation. It is much more than this. The Bible is the History Book of the Universe and tells us the future destiny of the universe as well. It gives us an account of when time began, the main events of history, such as the entrance of sin and death into the world, the time when the whole surface of the globe was destroyed by water, the giving of different languages at the Tower of Babel, the account of the Son of God coming as a man, His death and Resurrection, and the new heavens and earth to come.

Ultimately, there are only two ways of thinking: starting with the revelation from God (the Bible) as foundational to all thinking (including biology, history, and geology), resulting in a Christian worldview; or starting with man’s beliefs (for example, the evolutionary story) as foundational to all thinking, resulting in a secular worldview.

Most Christians have been indoctrinated through the media and education system to think in a secular way. They tend to take secular thinking to the Bible, instead of using the Bible to build their thinking (Romans 12:1–2 says “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”; Ephesians 4:20–24 says “But you have not so learned Christ; If so be that you have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: That you put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”)

The Bible says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7 says “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”) and “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10 says “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.”)

If one begins with an evolutionary view of history (for which there were no witnesses or written record), then this way of thinking will be used to explain the evidence that exists in the present. Thus, we have the evolutionary explanation for dinosaurs above.

But if one begins with the biblical view of history from the written record of an eyewitness (God) to all events of history, then a totally different way of thinking, based on this, will be used to explain the same evidence. Thus, we have the biblical explanation given above.

Making Sense of Dinosaurs: PART IV

NOTE: Anything with * * refer to end of post for footnotes

Dinosaur History
Fossil bones of dinosaurs are found around the world. Many of these finds consist of just fragments of bones, but some nearly complete skeletons have been found. Scientists have been able to describe many different types of dinosaurs based on distinctive characteristics, such as the structure of the skull and limbs.*8*

Where Did Dinosaurs Come From?
The Bible tells us that God created different kinds of land animals on Day 6 of Creation Week (Genesis 1:24–25 says “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creeps upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”) Because dinosaurs were land animals, this must have included the dinosaur kinds.*9*

Evolutionists claim that dinosaurs evolved from some reptile that had originally evolved from amphibians. But they cannot point to any clear transitional (in-between) forms to substantiate their argument. Dinosaur family trees in evolutionary books show many distinct types of dinosaurs, but only hypothetical lines join them up to some common ancestor. The lines are dotted because there is no fossil evidence. Evolutionists simply cannot prove their belief in a nondinosaur ancestor for dinosaurs.

What Did Dinosaurs Look Like?
Scientists generally do not dig up a dinosaur with all its flesh intact. Even if they found all the bones, they still would have less than 40 percent of the animal to work out what it originally looked like. The bones do not tell the color of the animal, for example, although some fossils of skin impressions have been found, indicating the skin texture. As there is some diversity of color among reptiles living today, dinosaurs may have varied greatly in color, skin texture, and so on.

When reconstructing dinosaurs from bony remains, scientists make all kinds of guesses and often disagree. For example, debate has raged about whether dinosaurs were warm- or cold-blooded. It is even difficult to tell whether a dinosaur was male or female from its bones. There is much speculation about such things.

Sometimes scientists make mistakes in their reconstructions, which need correction when more bones are found. For instance, the famous Brontosaurus is not in newer dinosaur dictionaries. The original “discoverer” put the wrong head on a skeleton of a dinosaur that had already been named Apatosaurus.*10*

Who Discovered Dinosaurs?
Secular books would tell you that the first discovery of what later were called dinosaurs was in 1677 when Dr. Robert Plot found bones so big they were thought to belong to a giant elephant or a giant human.*11*

In 1822, Mary Anne Mantell went for a walk along a country road in Sussex, England. According to tradition, she found a stone that glittered in the sunlight and showed it to her fossil-collecting husband. Dr. Mantell, a physician, noticed that the stone contained a tooth similar to, but much larger than, that of modern reptiles. He concluded that it belonged to some extinct giant plant-eating reptile with teeth like an iguana. In 1825 he named the owner of the tooth Iguanodon (iguana tooth). It was Dr. Mantell who began to popularize the “age of reptiles.”*12*

From a biblical perspective, however, the time of the above discoveries was actually the time when dinosaurs were rediscovered. Adam discovered dinosaurs when he first observed them.

FOOTNOTES

8 D. Lambert, A Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Avon Books, New York, 1983, 17.
9 If some dinosaurs were aquatic, then these would have been created on Day 5 of Creation Week.
10 S. West, Dinosaur head hunt, Science News 116(18):314–315, 1979. Originally assembled wrongly with the head of a Camarasaurus-type dinosaur on an Apatosaurus skeleton and later corrected with the right head, which was from “the same family as its nearly identical cousin, Diplodocus,” p. 314.
11 Benton, Dinosaurs: An A-Z Guide, 14.
12 Lambert et al., The Dinosaur Data Book, 279.

Making Sense of Dinosaurs: PART V

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When Did Dinosaurs Live?
Evolutionists claim dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. But it is important to realize that when they dig up a dinosaur bone it does not have a label attached showing its date. Evolutionists obtain their dates by indirect dating methods that other scientists question, and there is much evidence against the millions of years.*13*

Does God tell us when He made Tyrannosaurus rex? Many would say no. But the Bible states that God made all things in six normal days. He made the land animals, including dinosaurs, on Day 6 (Genesis 1:24–25 says “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creeps upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”), so they date from around 6,000 years ago—the approximate date of creation obtained by adding up the years in the Bible.*14* So, since T. rex was a land animal and God made all the land animals on Day 6, then God made T. rex on Day 6.

Furthermore, from the Bible we see that there was no death, bloodshed, disease, or suffering before sin.*15* If one approaches Genesis to Revelation consistently, interpreting Scripture with Scripture, then death and bloodshed of man and animals came into the world only after Adam sinned. The first death of an animal occurred when God shed an animal’s blood in the Garden of Eden and clothed Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21 says “To Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.”) This was also a picture of the Atonement—foreshadowing Christ’s blood that was to be shed for us. Thus, there could not have been bones of dead animals before sin—this would undermine the gospel.

This means that the dinosaurs must have died after sin entered the world, not before. Dinosaur bones could not be millions of years old because Adam lived only thousands of years ago.

FOOTNOTES

13 Morris, The Young Earth, 51–67. Back
14 Morris, The Genesis Record, 44–46. Back
15 J. Stambaugh, Creation, suffering and the problem of evil, CEN Technical Journal 10(3):391–404, 1996. Back

Making Sense of Dinosaurs: PART VI

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Does the Bible Mention Dinosaurs?
If people saw dinosaurs, you would think that ancient historical writings, such as the Bible, should mention them. The King James Version was first translated in 1611.*16* Some people think that because the word “dinosaur” is not found in this or other translations, the Bible does not mention dinosaurs.

It was not until 1841, however, that the word “dinosaur” was invented.*17* Sir Richard Owen, a famous British anatomist and first superintendent of the British Museum (and a staunch anti-Darwinist), on viewing the bones of Iguanodon and Megalosaurus, realized these represented a unique group of reptiles that had not yet been classified. He coined the term “dinosaur” from Greek words meaning “terrible lizard.”*18*

Thus, one would not expect to find the word “dinosaur” in the King James Bible—the word did not exist when the translation was done.

Is there another word for “dinosaur”? There are dragon legends from around the world. Many dragon descriptions fit the characteristics of specific dinosaurs. Could these actually be accounts of encounters with what we now call dinosaurs?

Just as Flood legends are based on a real global Flood (Flood of Noah)— dragon legends are possibly based on actual encounters with real animals that today we call dinosaurs. Many of these land-dragon descriptions do fit with what we know about dinosaurs.

In Genesis 1:21, the Bible says, “And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind.” The Hebrew word here for “sea monsters” (“whales” in KJV) is the word translated elsewhere as “dragon” (Hebrew: tannin). So, in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, God may be describing the great sea dragons (sea-dwelling, dinosaur-type animals) that He created.

There are other Bible passages about dragons that lived in the sea: “the dragons in the waters” (Psalm 74:13 says “You did divide the sea by your strength: you break the heads of the dragons in the waters.”), “and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea” (Isaiah 27:1 says “In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.”). Though the word “dinosaur” strictly refers to animals that lived on the land, the sea reptiles and flying reptiles are often grouped with the dinosaurs. The sea dragons could have included dinosaur-type animals such as the Mosasaurus.*19*

Job 41 describes a great animal that lived in the sea, Leviathan, that even breathed fire. This “dragon” may have been something like the mighty 40 ft. (12 m) Sarcosuchus imperator (Super Croc),*20* or the 82 ft. (25 m) Liopleurodon.

There is also mention of a flying serpent in the Bible: the “fiery flying serpent” (Isaiah 30:6 says “The burden of the beasts of the south: into the land of trouble and anguish, from which come the young and old lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent,…”). This could be a reference to one of the pterodactyls, which are popularly thought of as flying dinosaurs, such as the Pteranodon, Rhamphorhynchus, or Ornithocheirus.*21*

Not long after the Flood, God was showing a man called Job how great He was as Creator, by reminding Job of the largest land animal He had made:

Look now at the behemoth, which I made along with you; he eats grass like an ox. See now, his strength is in his hips, and his power is in his stomach muscles. He moves his tail like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are tightly knit. His bones are like beams of bronze, his ribs like bars of iron. He is the first of the ways of God; only He who made him can bring near His sword (Job 40:15–19).
The phrase “first of the ways of God” suggests this was the largest land animal God had made. So what kind of animal was “behemoth”?

Bible translators, not being sure what this beast was, often transliterated the Hebrew, and thus the word behemoth (e.g., KJV, NKJV, NASB, NIV). However, in many Bible commentaries and Bible footnotes, “behemoth” is said to be “possibly the hippopotamus or elephant.”*22* Some Bible versions actually translate “behemoth” this way.*23* Besides the fact that the elephant and hippo were not the largest land animals God made (some of the dinosaurs far eclipsed these), this description does not make sense, since the tail of behemoth is compared to the large cedar tree (verse 17).

Now an elephant’s tiny tail (or a hippo’s tail that looks like a flap of skin) is quite unlike a cedar tree. Clearly, the elephant and the hippo could not possibly be “behemoth.”

No living creature comes close to this description. However, behemoth is very much like Brachiosaurus, one of the large dinosaurs.

FOOTNOTES

16 The KJV most often used today is actually the 1769 revision by Benjamin Blayney of Oxford.
17 D. Dixon et al., The Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals, Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1998, 92; R. Grigg, Dinosaurs and dragons: stamping on the legends! Creation, 14(3):11, 1990.
18 D. Norman, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, Salamander Books Limited, London, 1985, 8. The meaning of “terrible lizard” has helped popularize the idea that dinosaurs were all gigantic savage monsters. This is far from the truth. Had Owen known about the smaller dinosaurs, he may never have coined the word.
19 The Hebrew words have a range of meanings, including “sea monster” (Gen. 1:21; Job 7:12; Psa. 148:7; Isa. 27:1; Ezek. 29:3, 32:2) and “serpent” (Exod. 7:9; cf. Exod. 4:3 and Hebrew parallelism of Deut. 32:33). Tannin/m are fearsome creatures, inhabiting remote, desolate places (Isa. 34:13, 35:7; Jer. 49:33, 51:37; Mal. 1:8), difficult to kill (Isa. 27:1, 51:9) and/or serpentine (Deut. 32:33; cf. Psa. 91:13) and/or having feet (Ezek. 32:2). However, tannin are referred to as suckling their young (Lam. 4:3), which is not a feature of reptiles, but of whales (sea monsters?), for example. The word(s) seems to refer to large, fearsome creatures that dwelled in swampy areas or in the water. The term could include reptiles and mammals. Modern translators often render the words as “jackals,” but this seems inappropriate because jackals are not particularly fearsome or difficult to kill and don’t live in swamps.
20 S. Czerkas and S. Czerkas, Dinosaurs: A Global View, Barnes and Noble Books, Spain, 1996, 179; P. Booker, A new candidate for Leviathan? TJ 19(2):14–16, 2005.
21 D. Norman, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, Gramercy, New York, 1988, 170– 172; P. Wellnhofer, Pterosaurs: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Prehistoric Flying Reptiles, Barnes and Noble, New York, 1991, 83–85, 135–136.
22 E.g., NIV Study Bible, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1985.
23 New Living Translation: Holy Bible, Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois, 1996. Job 40:15: “Take a look at the mighty hippopotamus.”

Making Sense of Dinosaurs: PART VII

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Are There Other Ancient Records of Dinosaurs?
In the film The Great Dinosaur Mystery,*24* a number of dragon accounts are presented:

A Sumerian story dating back to 2000 BC or earlier tells of a hero named Gilgamesh, who, when he went to fell cedars in a remote forest, encountered a huge vicious dragon that he slew, cutting off its head as a trophy.
When Alexander the Great (c. 330 BC) and his soldiers marched into India, they found that the Indians worshipped huge hissing reptiles that they kept in caves.
China is renowned for its dragon stories, and dragons are prominent on Chinese pottery, embroidery, and carvings.
England and several other cultures retain the story of St. George, who slew a dragon that lived in a cave.
There is the story of a tenth-century Irishman who wrote of his encounter with what appears to have been a Stegosaurus.
In the 1500s, a European scientific book, Historia Animalium, listed several living animals that we would call dinosaurs. A well-known naturalist of the time, Ulysses Aldrovandus, recorded an encounter between a peasant named Baptista and a dragon whose description fits that of the small dinosaur Tanystropheus. The encounter was on May 13, 1572, near Bologna in Italy, and the peasant killed the dragon.
Petroglyphs (drawings carved on rock) of dinosaurlike creatures have also been found.*25*

In summary, people down through the ages have been very familiar with dragons. The descriptions of these animals fit with what we know about dinosaurs. The Bible mentions such creatures, even ones that lived in the sea and flew in the air. There is a tremendous amount of other historical evidence that such creatures have lived beside people.

FOOTNOTES

24 P. Taylor, The Great Dinosaur Mystery, Films for Christ, Mesa, Arizona, 1991. See also P. Taylor, The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible, Accent Publications, Denver, Colorado, 1989.
25 D. Swift, Messages on stone, Creation 19(2):20–23, 1997.

Making Sense of Dinosaurs: PART VIII

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What Do the Bones Say?
There is also physical evidence that dinosaur bones are not millions of years old. Scientists from Montana State University found T. rex bones that were not totally fossilized. Sections of the bones were like fresh bone and contained what seems to be blood cells and hemoglobin. If these bones really were tens of millions of years old, then the blood cells and hemoglobin would have totally disintegrated.*26* Also, there should not be “fresh” bones if they were really millions of years old.*27* A report by these scientists stated the following:

A thin slice of T. rex bone glowed amber beneath the lens of my microscope … . The lab filled with murmurs of amazement, for I had focused on something inside the vessels that none of us had ever noticed before: tiny round objects, translucent red with a dark center … . Red blood cells? The shape and location suggested them, but blood cells are mostly water and couldn’t possibly have stayed preserved in the 65-million-year-old tyrannosaur … . The bone sample that had us so excited came from a beautiful, nearly complete specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex unearthed in 1990 … . When the team brought the dinosaur into the lab, we noticed that some parts deep inside the long bone of the leg had not completely fossilized … . So far, we think that all of this evidence supports the notion that our slices of T. rex could contain preserved heme and hemoglobin fragments. But more work needs to be done before we are confident enough to come right out and say, “Yes, this T. rex has blood compounds left in its tissues.”*28*
Unfossilized duck-billed dinosaur bones have been found on the North Slope in Alaska.*29* Also, creation scientists collected such (unfossilized) frozen dinosaur bones in Alaska.*30* Evolutionists would not say that these bones had stayed frozen for the many millions of years since these dinosaurs supposedly died out (according to evolutionary theory). Yet the bones could not have survived for the millions of years unmineralized. This is a puzzle to those who believe in an “age of dinosaurs” millions of years ago, but not to someone who builds his thinking on the Bible.

FOOTNOTES

26 C. Wieland, Sensational dinosaur blood report, Creation 19(4):42–43, 1997.
27 D. Batten, Buddy Davis—the creation music man (who makes dinosaurs), Creation 19(3):49–51, 1997; M. Helder, Fresh dinosaur bones found, Creation 14(3):16–17, 1992.
28 M. Schweitzer and T. Staedter, The real Jurassic Park, Earth, pp. 55–57, June 1997. See report in Creation 19(4):42–43, which describes the careful testing that showed that hemoglobin was present.
29 K. Davies, Duckbill dinosaurs (Hadrosauridae, Ornithischia) from the North Slope of Alaska, Journal of Paleontology 61(1):198–200, 1987.
30 Batten, Buddy Davis—the creation music man, 1997.

Making Sense of Dinosaurs: PART IX

NOTE: Anything with * * refer to end of post for footnotes

What Did Dinosaurs Eat and How Did They Behave?
Movies like Jurassic Park and The Lost World portray most dinosaurs as aggressive meat-eaters. But the mere presence of sharp teeth does not tell you how an animal behaved or necessarily what food it ate—only what kind of teeth it had (for ripping food and the like). However, by studying fossil dinosaur dung (coprolite), scientists have been able to determine the diet of some dinosaurs.*31*

Originally, before sin, all animals, including the dinosaurs, were vegetarian. Genesis 1:30 states, “And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to every thing that creeps upon the earth, which has life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so.”

This means that even T. rex, before sin entered the world, ate only plants. Some people object to this by pointing to the big teeth that a large T. rex had, insisting they must have been used for attacking animals. However, just because an animal has big, sharp teeth does not mean it eats meat. It just means it has big, sharp teeth!*32*

Many animals today have sharp teeth but are basically vegetarian. The giant panda has sharp teeth like a meat-eater’s, but it eats bamboo. Perhaps the panda’s teeth were beautifully designed to eat bamboo. To explain why a giant panda has teeth like a meat-eaters today, yet eats bamboo, evolutionists have to say that the giant panda evolved as a meat eater, and then switched to bamboo.*33*

Different species of bats variously eat fruit, nectar, insects, small animals, and blood, but their teeth do not clearly indicate what they eat.*34* Bears have teeth with carnivore features, but some bears are vegetarian, and many, if not most, are mainly vegetarian.

Before sin, God described the world as “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Some cannot accept this concept of perfect harmony because of the food chain that they observe in today’s world. However, one cannot look at the sin-cursed world and the resultant death and struggle, and use this to reject the Genesis account of history. Everything has changed because of sin. That’s why Paul describes the present creation as “groaning” (Romans 8:22 says “For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now”). One must look through the Bible’s “eyes” to understand the world.*35*

Some argue that people or animals would have been hurt even in an ideal world. They contend that even before sin, Adam or an animal could have stood on small creatures or scratched himself on a branch. Now these sorts of situations are true of today’s fallen world—the present world is not perfect; it is suffering from the effects of the Curse (Romans 8:22 says “For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now”). One cannot look at the Bible through the world’s eyes and insist that the world before sin was just like the world we see today. We do not know what a perfect world, continually restored and totally upheld by God’s power (Colossians 1:17 says “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”; Hebrews 1:3 says “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;”), would have been like—we have never experienced perfection (only Adam and Eve did before sin).

We do get little glimpses from Scripture, however; in Deuteronomy 8:4 says “Your raiment waxed not old upon you, neither did your foot swell, these forty years.”, 29:5 says “And I have led you forty years in the wilderness: your clothes are not waxen old upon you, and your shoe is not waxen old upon your feet.” and Nehemiah 9:21 says “Yea, forty years did you sustain them in the wilderness, so that they lacked nothing; their clothes waxed not old, and their feet swelled not.”, we are told that when the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years, their clothes and shoes did not wear out, nor did their feet swell. When God upholds things perfectly, wearing out or being hurt in any way is not even an option.

Think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 3:26–27 says “Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, and spoke, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you servants of the most high God, come forth, and come here. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, came forth of the midst of the fire. And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, not the smell of fire had passed on them.”) They came out of the fire without even the smell of smoke on them. Again, when the Lord upholds perfectly, being hurt is not possible. In a perfect world, before sin and the Curse, God would have upheld everything, but in this cursed world, things run down. Many commentators believe the description in Isaiah 11:6–9 says “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lions shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” of the wolf and lamb, and the lion that eats straw like an ox, is a picture of the new earth in the future restoration (Acts 3:21 says “Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God has spoken by mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.”) when there will be no more curse or death (Revelation 21:1 says “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”, 22:3 says “And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:”). The animals described are living peacefully as vegetarians (this is also the description of the animal world before sin—Genesis 1:30 says “And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creeps upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.”)Today’s world has been changed dramatically because of sin and the Curse. The present food chain and animal behavior (which also changed after the Flood—Genesis 9:2–3 says “And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moves upon the earth and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.”) cannot be used as a basis for interpreting the Bible—the Bible explains why the world is the way it is.

In the beginning, God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the animals: “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Genesis 1:28 says “And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”) Looking at today’s world, we are reminded of Hebrews 2:8: “For in that He put all in subjection under him, He left nothing that is not put under him. But now we do not yet see all things put under him.” Man’s relationship with all things changed because of sin—they are not “under him” as they were originally.

Most people, including most Christians, tend to observe the world as it is today, with all its death and suffering, and then take that observation to the Bible and interpret it in that light. But we are sinful, fallible human beings, observing a sin-cursed world (Romans 8:22 says “For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now.”); and thus, we need to start with divine revelation, the Bible, to begin to understand.

So how did fangs and claws come about? Dr. Henry Morris, a founding figure in the modern creation movement, states:

Whether such structures as fangs and claws were part of their original equipment, or were recessive features which only became dominant due to selection processes later, or were mutational features following the Curse, or exactly what, must await further research.*36*
After sin entered the world, everything changed. Maybe some animals started eating each other at this stage. By the time of Noah, God described what had happened this way: “So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth” (Genesis 6:12).

Also, after the Flood, God changed the behavior of animals. We read, “And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand” (Genesis 9:2). Thus, man would find it much more difficult to carry out the dominion mandate given in Genesis 1:28 that says “And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”)

FOOTNOTES

31 S. Lucas, Dinosaurs: The Textbook, Wm. C. Brown Publishers, Dubuque, IA, 1994, 194– 196.
32 D. Marrs and V. Kylberg, Dino Cardz, 1991. Estemmenosuchus was a large mammal-like reptile. “Despite having menacing-looking fangs it apparently was a plant-eater.” The authors possibly concluded this from its rear teeth.
33 K. Brandes, Vanishing Species, Time-Life Books, New York, 1974, 98.
34 P. Weston, Bats: sophistication in miniature, Creation 21(1):28–31, 1999.
35 Morris, The Genesis Record, 78.
36 See chapter 21 for more on the possible origin of defense-attack structures.